One of the first people to offer help after a boat collision on B.C.'s Shuswap Lake is speaking out about the crash that killed one man.
Seventeen-year-old Kirk McLaren had been out on the water on Saturday night along with hundreds of other boaters, all watching a fireworks display.
He had just docked his boat when he heard the crash -- an 18-foot Campion speedboat had slammed headfirst into 40-foot houseboat.
"You could hear the engine of the Campion still running -- the propellers were running -- it was really loud, and then I head people yelling, ‘Help, help, we've been hit,'" McLaren told CTV News.
In Pictures: Speedboat slams into houseboat
He said he got back into his boat and made it out to the houseboat in about a minute.
"When I got to the back of the boat, I said ‘What happened?' and they said ‘There's a boat inside of our boat.'"
McLaren ended up transporting people to shore, including a woman with a baby.
"I picked up a first responder off my dock, and I drove them out there. She helped the people under the boat, stuck. There was a girl with her hair pinned."
The houseboat's driver, 53-year-old Ken Brown of Anglemont, B.C., was killed in the crash -- his funeral will be held on Friday. Thirteen people were on board the houseboat, while three others were in the speedboat.
Eight people were taken to Royal Inland Hospital in Kamloops with injuries ranging from minor bruises to fractures and head injuries.
CTV News spoke to the driver of the speedboat, Leon Reinbrecht, who said that he didn't see the houseboat before he hit it.
"We hit something in the dark. We did not know what it was."
But McLaren said the houseboat had its lights on when he saw it.
"It had its two front lights on, the green and the red, and then a light on at the back, I believe."
McLaren has spoken to investigators, who are still trying to piece together exactly what happened, but the RCMP say it could take months before they'll know whether any charges could be laid.
With a report from CTV British Columbia's Maria Weisgarber
